


Duty of Care

by DoctorTrekLock



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Backstory, Duty of Care, Friendship, Gen, Mail Order Catalogs, Spoilers for Foxglove Summer, World War II, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 22:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorTrekLock/pseuds/DoctorTrekLock
Summary: There is a reason that Molly guards the Folly.





	Duty of Care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Keerawa! As you can see, I went with a Molly-centric fic, but I did toss in a dash of a few of your other prompts as well. I hope this story meets your expectations. :-)
> 
> This fic is NOT a Molly/Thomas fic, but it could be kind-of a pre-Thomas/Peter fic if you'd like.
> 
> My betas are the usual suspects, but I shan't spoil the surprise. (I'll add your names after the author reveal, m'dears.)
> 
> EDIT: My darling betas are ImprobableDreams900 and Spinner12.

_Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell. - Joan Crawford_

  

There is a reason that Molly guards the Folly.

Before nearly the entire contingent of English wizardry had died bloody near a small town in Germany, there had been a host of help below-stairs, both fierce, proud women and nervous, stalwart boys. Once the house was empty, the quarters below followed, until there were only two souls left in the building: the Nightingale and Molly.

They called him “the Nightingale” as a sign of respect and of separation, to mark him as something _other_. Molly already knew he was something different from herself. She called him “the Nightingale” because he was different from _them_.

\--

Molly had never paid much attention to Thomas Nightingale. He wasn't the kind of wizard who spent much time with kitchen maids. Not like some of the other inhabitants of the Folly who summoned the maids from their chores with an impudent entitlement. The girls would smooth their aprons with impatient fingers and pinch their lips together tightly in annoyance before sliding on a smile and climbing the stone steps that led them to the men they could not ignore.

No, Thomas Nightingale had never been one of those wizards.

He was now standing awkwardly in the door of her kitchen, his hands in his pockets and his hair rumpled. He looked unsure.

Molly stared at him. She had spent the last weeks cleaning rooms that their previous inhabitants would never sleep in again. Thomas Nightingale had not been the only one to return from the front, shattered and too quickly pasted back together before being shipped out of hospitals and barracks. Four months after a fragile peace was imposed, however, he was the only one who remained. Hugh Oswald had broken his staves. David Mellenby had been carried out feet first. The rest had followed similarly in one fashion or the other until only the Nightingale remained.

“Er,” he started half-heartedly, then cleared his throat and stood up straight, his hands falling out of his pockets to rest at his sides. “I have come to inform you that your services will no longer be required.”

The moment stretched on. Molly stared at Thomas Nightingale until he began to shuffle awkwardly, then she bared her teeth at him in defiance. She would not be leaving the Folly even if she were the only one remaining in the building. She would never again venture into the cruel and cold world outside her walls if there were any way she could prevent it.

“Right,” Thomas Nightingale said faintly, seeming incapable of looking away from her teeth. “Of course.” He tore his gaze away and cleared his throat again. “If you’d rather stay, I shall, of course, not dissuade you.”

He was over forty, with grief-driven wrinkles and prematurely silver-shot hair. He had seen more war and death than any might wish. And here he stood in Molly’s kitchen and spoke to her as an equal when none before him had stooped to it.

Thomas Nightingale had never been like the other wizards.

“I will be staying,” he said firmly, his eyes fixed on the edge of the table behind her. Molly thought he seemed to be breaking the news to himself as much as to her. “There are things here that can never fall into the wrong hands. I shall be remaining to see to their keeping.” He looked her in the eye again. “As I said, you are not required to remain, but if you choose to, I shall be glad of the company.” He nodded firmly, then paused and nodded again. “Yes.”

And that was that.

\--

There had always been those who had sought illicit entry into the fortress. A human thief ignorant of the Folly’s true purpose had come seeking treasures in 1922 and had been quickly dissuaded by the cook Martha and her heavy rolling pin. In '38 a wizard had resented his dismissal from the Folly and had attempted to break in via the back door before running afoul of the chauffeurs and a pair of automobiles. In both cases, the staff had dispatched the intruders with the wizards slumbering inside nary the wiser.

After the war, there had been several more incidents. The number of people who knew the treasures the Folly contained had shrunk, as had the number who now knew she was empty, but there were always those - magical and mundane - who wished to test the defenses of any building that lacked constant activity. Whereas once the protection of the building had fallen to a small army of below-stairs help, there was now only Molly, and she had accepted the mantle with a vicious duty of care.

\--

It was September of 1961. The Nightingale had taken to carrying his silver-tipped cane with him as he walked around the Folly, now more as a support than a magical defense. Though he was only barely over 60, the years of grief and self-imposed isolation had aged him before his time. He walked between rooms during the day, stopping in doorways and staring at people and scenes that no longer existed. At night he slept poorly, tossing and turning for hours, forcing only a few hours of sleep out of the early morning before the dawn broke.

Molly kept the sheets fresh, the Folly dusted, and the dining table full of suet and toffee pudding. She did what she could for the lone wizard who guarded the fortress. Nevertheless, the Nightingale was haunted, and he and Molly moved through the Folly like a pair of ghosts. The Nightingale remained because of a secret he could not leave unguarded. Molly stayed because she could not imagine leaving. It was comforting, in a way, that the two of them could be alone together. It served to give Molly some sense of purpose to her days. If she had been alone in truth, the building might have begun to seem more of a prison than a home.

On the September night in question, the Nightingale retreated to his bedroom shortly after dinner. Molly knew he would be listening to records from the 1930s and reorganizing his bookshelves again, trying to keep from drowning in the memories inside his head. Molly herself had been idly flipping through the lone cookbook in the kitchen (left there from Abigail's ill-fated attempt at infusing standardization to the menu in 1926) for the eighty-third time and contemplating the mail order catalog due to arrive the next day, when she heard something.

It wasn't a loud noise. A human ear wouldn't have detected it. Molly herself only heard the faintest click of well-oiled metal in a lock half a flight of stairs and a hallway away. Instantly she was on high alert. There hadn't been any call for opening the rear door on the courtyard all day, and deliveries were always concluded well before tea.

Molly quietly set down the book and rose to her feet, silently slipping out of the kitchen and up the stairs. She paused just before turning the corner by the back door. She could hear low voices murmuring to each other, at least three. One of them rose and fell as if arguing. The second said something back, short and sharp. The third tried to calm the situation with a low, soothing voice. She could hear the scuff of boots on stone and revised her estimate to four men.

Molly smiled, her teeth glinting in the dim light. This was going to be fun.

Before she could move, the fourth man's voice cut across the conversation. “ _Prekratite tratit' vremya. Nam nuzhna chernaya biblioteka._ ” The words were Russian, but Molly could make out enough of it. _Chernaya biblioteka_ \- Black Library.

After word had gotten back to the housekeepers and scullery maids that Operation Spatchcock had been an unmitigated disaster, but before Thomas Nightingale had stood in her doorway and stumbled through a dismissal, Molly had silently watched as dozens and dozens of sealed record boxes were carted into the Folly. At first, they had been taken to one of the laboratories on the first floor. Every night for a month and a half she had heard loud arguments from behind that door between David Mellenby and Thomas Nightingale.

After David Mellenby had left the Folly, the boxes were placed in one of the servants' rooms in the basement, one that had most recently belonged to Bertha, a laundress who had returned to Devonshire after her brother was killed attempting to reach a beach in Normandy. Looking tired and more haggard by the day, Thomas Nightingale had grimly overseen the procession. Once Bertha's old room was full, floor-to-ceiling, with unopened record boxes, the Nightingale had sealed the door firmly with a complicated series of sygils and spells. He carved magic into the door and its frame, the lines anywhere between a hair's breadth and the width of a thumb thick. When he was done, the power required to force the door open would have leveled half of London.

Thomas Nightingale had never told Molly about the Black Library in so many words, but she had heard the weeks of arguments, everything from calm debates to screaming matches. She knew what those papers contained and she knew first-hand the kind of damage that could be done with that sort of information. Thomas Nightingale had never asked Molly for her help in seeing to the security of the Black Library. He had taken it upon himself, and Molly had appointed herself its guardian as well.

Any glee or levity Molly had felt at the prospect of breaking up the evening’s monotony had evaporated. This was not a poorly planned, amateur attempt to rob a Georgian terrace. This was a premeditated assault on the Folly to secure the Black Library and the macabre secrets contained therein. The removal of the four trespassers was no longer an entertaining diversion on a quiet evening. It was an imperative.

Quick as lightening, Molly whipped around the corner and lunged, grabbing the nearest man by the collar of his jacket and breaking his neck in one swift motion. The other three startled backwards. The tall blond in the middle stumbled back several steps while fumbling for something in his coat pocket. The shorter blond man on her right took a half-step back and held one of his hands up, trying to pull his focus together enough for a spell. The dark-haired man on Molly's left died in a shower of his own blood.

If Molly were as human as she appeared, the long string of _formae_  that the shorter man spat out would have pulled her molecules apart. As it was, a sizzle ran across her skin as simultaneously a wave of magic broke over her and washed through the building. She whipped her head in his direction and smiled at him, showcasing the pointed teeth that revealed she wasn't nearly as human as he had anticipated. He died next, slumping against the wall with a broken neck before he'd even registered the motion of her hands.

By now the tallest man - the only surviving burglar - had managed to arm himself with a switchblade and his own string of _formae_  - these more basic, designed to incinerate. Again, Molly felt only a wash of heat over her skin as she turned in his direction and began stalking towards him. The man kept backpedaling and hastily threw up a shield against her advance. A human would have been stopped in their tracks, but Molly continued her prowl as the shield stretched and snapped around her form. She easily batted the switchblade away with one hand and used the other to pin him against the wall by his neck.

The man gaped at her and began to scramble, scratching ineffectually at her arm in an attempt to loosen her grip on his throat. Molly simply bared her teeth in a snarl and hissed at him as he slowly turned blue. After a few minutes, he stopped kicking at the wall.

Molly took a deep breath in the silence.

The scrape of fabric on stone and the muffled thump of a stick on rock echoed down the hallway and she turned, bracing herself for more interlopers, to see Thomas Nightingale hurrying around the corner. He was in his shirtsleeves and slippers and leaning heavily on a cane. His face was red, but it was difficult to tell if it was from the exertion of rushing down two flights of stairs or from tears that had been quickly wiped away when the shockwaves from the first spell had reached his room.

He came to a sudden and abrupt halt when he saw Molly. There was a beat of silence while he stared at the tableau before him, but then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. The Nightingale cleared his throat. It sounded loud in the quiet hallway. “I would offer my assistance,” he began, “but I can see it is...no long required.” His eyes wandered across the man Molly was pinning to the wall and then slowly traced the three still bodies behind her. “If you would be so kind as to assist me,” - his eyes tracked over to the spray of blood staining the stone wall - “we could perhaps begin to clean up?”

Thomas Nightingale met her eyes, his gaze steady without a trace of fear.

Molly stared at him for a moment in bewilderment. Then she smiled at him. This was not the large grin she had given the intruders, designed to terrify and alarm. This was a small smile, a more genuine one that showed only the slightest self-conscious hint of teeth.

Then she and the Nightingale began putting the Folly to rights once more.

\--

As the decades continued to unfurl before them, the Nightingale and Molly fell into a holding pattern, retracing the same steps over and over again. While the world plowed steadily onward, inside the Folly it was always 1946.

\--

Molly had entered the Folly in 1911; she had never left. At first, this hadn't been a problem. The head housekeeper Tabitha had overseen the procurement of all required goods and services. Three years before the war started, the steward had begun to receive Littlewoods mail order catalogs. Patrick took a bullet to the hip in Egypt, but even after he had moved back to Surrey, the catalogs continued coming.

The Nightingale might have gone out to purchase goods if Molly had asked him to, but it wasn't his place, and Molly had the catalogs, so there was no need to ask him. The milk was delivered every morning, and if she stared hard enough at the milkman when she handed him a note, he passed it on to the grocer. Thus she had been able to establish a weekly delivery of foodstuffs, enough to feed herself and to tempt the Nightingale to the table.

After he'd been bringing her Littlewoods catalogs for three years, the mailman had tentatively asked if she wanted any other kinds of mail order catalogs. Molly had given him a close-mouthed smile and a nod, and he had brought her dozens and dozens of catalogs vending everything one could wish for under the sun.

By 1974, the Nightingale had noticed that he had begun growing younger. Then he took his first daytrip outside London in 35 years. A few years later, he started tentatively resuming contact with the Metropolitan Police Department and consulting on cases. In 2012, he brought Peter Grant through the door as an apprentice.

In 2005, Molly purchased a Blackberry mobile phone through the help of the newest mailwoman. After a few years, she began ordering most of the Folly's necessary goods through the Internet, though she maintained her subscriptions to as many mail order catalogs as she could find. A couple years after that, Molly had a touchscreen mobile phone and a Twitter account.

By the time Peter Grant arrived, she had established a line of communication with several individuals, including Harold Postmartin, Mellissa Oswald, and Jamie Oliver. For the first time since the last cook, Wendy, had patted her sympathetically, wished her well, and left her alone in an empty kitchen, Molly was able to communicate with someone who wasn’t bringing her an order or Thomas Nightingale.

Just as the parade of delivery people had been carrying mail order catalogs to her door since the 1930s, now the same set of ever-changing, ever-younger post deliverers brought her bills for her mobile phone.

Molly had determined early on that the Nightingale was not to be bothered with the trivialities of running any sort of household, including the purchasing of required materials. However, the Nightingale served as the trustee of the Folly's funds, and as such, all invoices and payment requests were deposited in a silver tray on his desk every week. As her medium changed, so too did the paperwork that found its way into the tray. Molly assumed that the newer bills were met with some bemusement, but Thomas Nightingale must have paid them, as the mobile phone Molly used continued to function as intended.

\--

Now though, there was more than just the Nightingale and Molly. The apprentice Peter Grant had entered the Folly and had brought with him a host of unforeseen circumstances.

\--

To begin with, Peter Grant had arrived at the Folly with a small, wriggly dog. The apprentice hadn't seemed to know what to do with it, but the Nightingale had begrudgingly allowed it to stay. There had been a few dogs in the Folly before. None had lived in the building permanently, but they had visited with their masters. Those were larger breeds, however, hunting dogs and those designed for vigorous exercises in the park. This dog was positively tiny in comparison, and much louder. Molly had begrudgingly allowed Toby the dog to stay. He did, after all, provide some body heat and the comfort of another living creature when she was alone.

The second unusual occurrence brought by Nightingale's apprentice was the addition of the River Goddess. The _genii locorum_  had never interacted positively with the wizards of the Folly, and Molly had no expectation of that changing soon. Peter Grant seemed intent on altering the status quo, but the Folly herself had insisted on strengthening the wards, much to Molly's pleasure. The Starling had been a little put out, but seemed happy enough to see the River outside the walls of the fortress.

Then there had been Others. The woman with the mask whom the Starling had brought and who had betrayed the Folly. The Russian Night-Witch who had injured the Nightingale and then remained prisoner in the Folly for a time. The Starling's cousin who visited to discuss ghosts and languages that hadn't been frequently spoken for a hundred years.

The latter had not yet caused problems. But the same had once been said of the Starling's friend in the mask. Time would tell if this young woman would follow in her cousin's footsteps and become an apprentice in truth, or if she would be the source of even greater distress to both of her charges. For she had accepted the Starling as one of her flock, so to speak. He had become a resident of the Folly as surely as the Nightingale had. They each shared a different history with her, but they were both hers to defend, just as the Folly herself was.

\--

There were intruders. In her Folly.

The heritage preservation fundraisers appeared at the door to the Folly on a brisk March morning, just before lunch, and asked for a moment of her time. Thomas Nightingale and Peter Grant were both out - the Starling was assisting on a case, and the Nightingale was dropping by the goblin market of the demi-monde (ostensibly to “keep an eye on the booksellers”, but really to see if he could suss out anything to help his apprentice). Molly was the only one left in the Folly to greet the visitors.

Toby the dog followed on their heels, yipping once or twice as he herded them after Molly into the sitting room. Molly kept her teeth carefully covered, disappearing swiftly into the kitchen for a pot of tea and returning with the tea tray just as quickly.

The nervous pair of historians asked when the owner of the building - “someone we can, er, talk to?” - might be returning to the residence. Molly blinked and gave them a pleasant, close-mouthed smile. The man looked uncomfortable and started looking around the room more obviously. The other historian, ignoring Toby the dog where he lay at her feet, simply poured tea into the two cups on the tray. Under Molly's unwavering stare, she relented slightly, losing some of her self-assurance. Following the addition of one sugar, the woman sipped nervously at her tea. A moment later, the man doctored his with a splash of milk and did the same.

Molly was not able or willing to give the pair the standard disclaimer, and they did not know to ask for it. It was child's play to dispose of them after that.

As soon as the front doors had closed behind them, Molly whisked the tea set back to the kitchen and ensured not a cushion was out of place in the sitting room. By the time the Nightingale and his Starling had returned to the Folly, there was no evidence the pair had ever entered her walls.

\--

After the betrayal of the woman in the mask, after the Nightingale had warned Molly to guard the Black Library with increased vigilance, after the Starling had returned to the Folly smelling of concrete dust and smoke, the Nightingale had sent his Starling out of the Folly. His aim was to give him the distraction of Hugh Oswald and a missing child, to perhaps give him relief from the nightmares that left him gasping every night and soaked his sheets in sweat. Instead, Peter Grant had only found more trouble.

\--

The Nightingale had appeared in her doorway looking worried. His apprentice had called him and now Thomas Nightingale was leaving London in order to offer his assistance.

“I was hoping you would be able to watch Varvara,” the Nightingale had offered. “It would be rather difficult for me to try and take her with me.”

Molly had nodded and agreed to take custody of the Night-Witch while the Nightingale was tending to his Starling. She had promptly secured the Night-Witch in her room and instructed Toby the dog to keep an eye on her.

The Nightingale had only been gone for an hour when the world shattered.

In 1911, Molly had been found by a member of the Folly during a raid on the home of a man suspected of human trafficking. Molly had been young when she had been trapped on this side of the curtain that separated her homeland from the land of mortals and wizards. Not young like a child or young like the Nightingale, but young like the Starling. Even now, she had difficulty remembering all the horrors that had been visited upon her in that building, but when she had been brought to the Folly, she had been quiet. Quiet like the Nightingale had been after Germany, though she had never been loud again the way he had when Peter Grant had come into the Folly.

Molly had not been born on mortal soil. Her father had been proud and fierce; her mother had been wild and fickle. She had been all at once until she was none of them.

The barrier between the worlds of the fae and the mortals hung in air, as easy to walk through as breathing for those who cared to look. In cities like London, where iron and steel ruled and the _genii_   _locorum_  held sway, the tapestry that hung between the worlds was heavy and stiff, requiring a substantial amount of will to pass through. In the countryside, where stone was more common than metal and fields could lie unchanged for a thousand years, the curtain betwixt the realms was gossamer thin, providing very little resistance for those of fae blood who wished to cross over.

What Molly felt now wasn't a slip through sheer fabric so much as it was a slice in solid linen. She immediately snapped her head up from where she was mashing potatoes in the kitchen and stared unerringly to the northwest, towards the locus of the disruption. Herefordshire.

Knowing the excitability of both mortals she had sworn to protect, Molly knew it could only be one of them. And the Nightingale had only just left. There hadn't been nearly enough time for him to reach the source of the disturbance. It must have been the Starling.

Oaths have power. Even ones spoken without words. Molly had vowed a duty of care to the Folly and her inhabitants, particularly Thomas Nightingale and Peter Grant. When the tear vanished as quickly as it had arrived - not stitched back together so much as untorn - closing with a reverberating finality, Molly knew that one of her charges had been taken back to the land of her birth.

Her hiss was loud in the silent kitchen. As was the clang of the pot of potatoes that she casually discarded.

Molly may have spent a century on this side of the curtain, but that did not mean she was without power. Her claim on the two wizards should have been strong enough to resist any casual demand for obeisance, and there had not been a great struggle over Peter Grant's person. The fae who had stolen away her ward was powerful, perhaps even the Queen herself. If Molly were to bring the Starling home to roost at the Folly once more, she would need to defend her claim in person.

She moved quickly into action. Molly had sought refuge inside the Folly's walls for a hundred years, but she would leave their safety without a moment’s thought if it would protect one of her own. The Black Library would be safe behind the Folly's wards and Thomas Nightingale's own spellcraft. Any attempt to breach the defenses of Bertha's room would destroy the city and the library before thieves had a hope of laying a finger on any of the documents contained therein.

Molly placed her hands flat on the stone wall of the kitchen and closed her eyes. The Folly hummed. Her wards were functional and she had yet to notice any problems. The Night-Witch was still in her room and Toby the dog still guarded the door. Molly paused. It would be difficult to reach Herefordshire by herself. Perhaps the Night-Witch could be pressed into service for transportation.

Her mind made up, Molly stepped quickly up staircases and through hallways, making her way to the Night-Witch's room. She moved silently through the building, though this was more a feature of habit than one of conscious stealth.

As she rounded the corner outside the Night-Witch's room and saw Toby the dog laying faithfully outside it, she felt a snag in the linen over Herefordshire. She stopped abruptly in her tracks and turned towards the disturbance again.

If a single being slipping between worlds was like Molly gliding silently into a room, then the earlier disturbance was more akin to the Starling and his guests tromping through the hall, their voices and footfalls echoing off marble. This, however, was like the Nightingale driving his Jaguar through the doors of the Folly at full speed.

The jagged tear left in the veil was palpable, even from the hundred miles between Molly and Herefordshire. There was a sharp, almost _metallic_ pressure through the gaping hole that left Molly panting wordlessly in the hallway, her hands on the nearby wall the only things keeping her knees underneath her. A few strands of hair had fallen from her mob cap and she brushed them back with shaking fingers. Toby the dog was standing next to her now, whining as he nosed at her leg.

Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the force vanished, leaving a yawning breech in the fabric of worlds and leaving Molly turning and slumping against the wall, falling down to sit at its base and simply breathe, trying to calm her racing heartbeat.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there, running her fingers through Toby the dog's fur as she settled back into her skin. The phone ringing drew her out of her reverie.

It was Thomas Nightingale. “I can only assume you felt that,” he began without a greeting. “I must assure you that Peter is all right. He got into some trouble with changelings, a unicorn, and the fae Queen, but Beverley used some...unorthodox methods and was able to retrieve him.” The Nightingale sounded tired. “He requires rest, but there are some loose ends to clean up here. He should be done within a day or so, I believe, and then he and I will be returning to the Folly together.” There was a short pause. “I do hope everything is going all right on your end.”

Molly let the silence hang in the air.

“I should hate to think Peter's actions have caused you any disquiet,” he said more gently, “and I am sure he feels the same. Moreso, in all likelihood.”

Molly hissed softly in acknowledgement.

\--

Yes, the Starling was full of trouble, just as the Nightingale, she was sure, had once been, before the fields of Ettersberg and the ever-present carvings on Bertha's door.

Yes, the Nightingale might be more solemn and somber than Peter Grant might wish, but he was already a far cry from the silent ghost she had inhabited the Folly with for five decades.

And yes, there might be macabre libraries and magical burglars and traitors in masks and Night-Witches, but there were also mail order catalogs and Toby the dog and wizards and companionship.

And all of it was hers.

Molly hung up the phone and returned to the kitchen to begin boiling water for tea. She had to make sure it had plenty of time to get cold before the Starling returned from Herefordshire. Perhaps she'd freeze it for him.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone's curious about the Russian, it is (according to my trusty-dusty Google translate) "Stop wasting time. We need the Black Library." (Transliterated into Latin characters, because I do not know how to pronounce Cyrillic letters.)


End file.
